First Published: Frontline, Vol. 3, No. 7, September 30, 1985.
Transcription, Editing and Markup: Paul Saba
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In a June report to a Communist Party USA (CPUSA) conference on the present stage of the struggle for Afro-American equality, Charlene Mitchell, chair of the CPUSA Nationalities Department, chose to launch an attack on Line of March. Mitchell charges us with putting brakes on the forward movement of the Afro-American struggle and with giving leadership only to frustration. According to Mitchell, Line of March has concocted a defeatist strategy for the Afro-American struggle born out of middle class impatience.
After taking a gratuitous and ill-informed swipe at the racial composition of Line of March, Mitchell goes on to remark:
The ideologues of Line of March have relegated so many white workers to the labor aristocracy that the few remaining are insignificant. Line of March concludes that only Black workers are radical enough to save the nation. While it is true that proportionately more Afro-Americans are in unions, it speaks more to their seeking unity than having to struggle without their class brothers and sisters. Whatever Line of March may want, Afro-American workers are not about to become their cannon fodder no matter how revolutionary it may sound. The bottom line is that the position of the Line of March is patently racist opportunism.
It is not clear from this report whether Mitchell has failed to understand the positions put forward by Line of March, has received an inaccurate summation of them, or has deliberately chosen to misrepresent and vulgarize them. In any case, we thought it better not to let this little jab pass without comment.
Mitchell identifies the task of communists in the Afro-American struggle in this way:
Our most important contribution is to bring clarity on the only winning strategy – the unity of the multi-racial, multi-national, male-female labor movement and the Afro-American people’s movement for equality.
In our view, the report is a rehash of the same tired formulations, thoroughly laced with economism and more than a dash of sectarianism, that have grown no more profound or precise through repetition over the years.
On the need for unity between labor and the Black anti-racist movement there is no argument. But the question that really requires clarity is “What are the most stubborn obstacles to achieving such unity?” And on this matter Line of March and the CPUSA come up with substantially different answers.
The CPUSA more or less consistently identifies the key obstacles to Black/white unity as: nationalism within the Black movement; an insufficiently developed appreciation within the Black movement of the centrality of the trade union movement in the struggle for Afro-American equality, and the failure to recognize class differences within the Black community. It is in line with this reasoning that Mitchell uses the report to restate her criticism of the 1984 Rainbow Coalition campaign for failing to “see the need to win labor. Most precisely, it does not see the imperative of winning white workers who are in the organized labor movement.”
As we have argued before, the CPUSA has gotten things exactly backwards. While it is true that the labor movement gave the Rainbow Coalition the widest possible berth, it is certainly not because labor was unwelcome in that coalition, as Mitchell would have us believe. Rather, the top and middle-level leadership of organized labor had fully committed itself to Mondale. It was not about to align itself with a political force that was intent on focusing attention on the very issues that the Democratic Party was most determined to bury – the failure of both Republicans and Democrats to protect or advance the rights of Black citizens and criticize the bellicose nature of U.S. foreign policy.
As for white workers more broadly, the fact that they overwhelmingly chose not to support Jesse Jackson and the program of the Rainbow Coalition can in no way be attributed to the coalition’s failure to put out the welcome mat. Rather, this, together with the fact that large numbers of white workers voted for Ronald Reagan, is an indication that much of the white sector of the U.S. working class does not recognize its class interests even when they are placed directly in front of them – and most especially if they are placed in front of them by a Black man.
We retrace this old news because the CPUSA is so persistent in its misidentification of the main block to working class unity. The CPUSA’s deeply entrenched economism makes it next to impossible for the party to settle with the fact that the Rainbow Coalition advanced a more progressive program than anything that the U. S. trade union movement has come up with in the past 35 years. Unfortunately, the U.S. labor movement hasn’t gotten out in front of the liberal bourgeoisie on any of the key political questions of the day – including how vigorously to pursue the struggle against racism. But, since to the CPUSA labor must lead, the fact that labor is not leading is treated as a non-fact.
Though the overwhelmingly working class character of the Black community is always taken note of in CPUSA materials, somehow that does not translate into the notion that the Black community may provide a more reliable base ( though certainly less well-organized) for working class politics than the labor movement under its present leadership.
Furthermore, the CPUSA cannot bear to take a sober look at the degree to which the white sector of the U. S. working class functions consciously in the political arena to preserve the differential in conditions of life between it and the colored sectors of the class. This is certainly an ugly reality of the class struggle in the U.S. – but it is a reality nonetheless. The CPUSA. brings no clarity to this problem by claiming that it is nationalism that stands in the way of white workers enthusiastically joining in the Afro-American struggle for equality.
Certainly various brands of nationalism have held influence in the Black movement, and in many instances they have had a negative impact on its political development. But insofar as the struggle for Black/white unity is concerned, the problem of nationalism on the part of Blacks pales in comparison to the stubbornness of racism on the part of whites, including far too many white workers.
It is not pessimism to take note of this. In fact, reckoning with this reality is the only way the communist movement will eventually be able to meet one of the most difficult challenges before it – struggling with the white sector of the class to break its long-held racist impulse.
But nowhere in Mitchell’s report on “the sharpened edge of racism” is there even a hint that the labor movement and white workers more broadly have been anything less than the most reliable of allies in the struggle against racism. Instead, the Black movement is chastised for turning its back on willing allies.
Mitchell gives the whole show away, however, with her formulation that the task of communists is to “bring the communist essence – the class content – to the (Afro-American) struggle, showing the labor movement as an ally that is also under attack.” All the economism and capitulation to opportunism of the CPUSA is summed up in this one sentence, where broadly, the “class content” is equated with – we chose not to should say reduced to – the notion that the entire trade union movement, no matter what its political stance at a given failure to put moment, is an ally of any progressive struggle.
Certainly communists must argue that, strategically, the working class is the only possible agent of social revolution in advanced capitalist society. But “class content” means going beyond this truth to explain where the actual class battlelines are being drawn, who is standing firm against the bourgeoisie, and who is sacrificing the interests of the broad masses for narrow and temporary benefit. This is what is needed to train the working class – Black and white workers alike – for the difficult and complex battle with a powerful enemy.
In this sense, the communists cannot simply assert that the labor movement is an ally of the Afro-American struggle if it is not functioning as such on the burning and concrete questions of the day. Saying it, even repeatedly, doesn’t make it so. Rather, the task of communists is to conduct the struggle internal to the U.S. labor movement against the opportunist – and racist – tendencies that presently hold sway. This can contribute to transforming the trade unions into the steadfast ally of the Afro-American struggle that they have the potential to be; but at present, that task can hardly be said to have been accomplished.
And now, pointing out that it has not been accomplished has become a crime in its own right. This appears to be the bone the CPUSA has chosen to pick with the Line of March.
But the CPUSA does not want to fight it out on these terms, where stubborn things like a few facts might undermine their illusions. So instead, the CPUSA takes to claiming that the Line of March has proposed a suicidal, go-it-alone strategy for the Black anti-racist struggle. Unprepared to engage in polemic at the necessary political and theoretical level, Mitchell herself is reduced to such cheap shots as the charge that Line of March would use Black workers as cannon fodder – to some end that is never, of course, made clear.
What is the real line dispute operating here? Mitchell’s basic complaint is that Line of March “has relegated so many white workers to the labor aristocracy” that there are precious few left to join in the struggle against racism. Mitchell’s problem here, besides her penchant for distorting the positions of Line of March, is that she maintains a lifeless, static view of the working class, and she cannot imagine how that class can be united if the process involves active polemic and struggle.
Line of March has never claimed that all white workers or even the majority are part of the labor aristocracy; and we have “relegated“ not a one to permanent alliance with the bourgeoisie. What we have argued is that U.S. capital’s exploitation of oppressed peoples around the world, and the U.S. system of white supremacy at home, provides a substantial material basis for opportunism within the U.S. working class. And our political punchline is that an aggressive and thoroughgoing struggle against this opportunism – a struggle which is concentrated in the fight against racism and national chauvinism – is an indispensable part of forging working class unity. Anything which detracts from this struggle, anything which implies that the communists can be complacent for one moment about taking it up, does a disservice to the workers’ movement. This is exactly the problem with the CPUSA’s downplaying of the extent and influence of opportunism within the working class; indeed, with the party’s actual denial of the very existence of a labor aristocracy and its habitual overstatement of the level of political consciousness of the working class, its white sector in particular.
Nor have we ever argued that Blacks in the U.S. are somehow inherently radical. Rather, we have argued that the Black community concentrates the experience of both racial oppression and exploitation of the poorest strata of the working class. And it is for this reason that the Black community tends to adopt more progressive politics on a whole range of issues than other sectors of U.S. society.
Neither this fact, nor the present degree of racist influences among white workers translates for us into the conclusion that Black workers must go it alone. On the contrary, it only underscores the urgency of fighting for unity in the working class across the color line. But as stated earlier, we have major differences with Mitchell and the CPUSA on how to achieve this. We think it takes looking reality in the face and conducting struggle, while they think it means putting on rose-colored glasses and going out into the class struggle armed only with platitudes, buttressed by a good dose of demagogy if you get in a tight spot.